Justice by Oleander - 2012 Watty Awards, Finalist

Chapter 1

© Carey MacLean, 2012

Chapter 1

Today was a new day.  Mika Stafford opened her eyes with a smile on her lips.  Last night, she had managed to fall asleep and not be terrorised by her habitual nightmares.  If it wasn’t the terrors, then it was the insomnia.  For the first time in a month, she had managed to sleep peacefully.  Perhaps it was the entire bottle of wine she had drunk in the garden; perhaps it was her extra-curricular events beforehand; or maybe it was a mix of all of the above.

Showered and dressed, she made a bee-line for her car and headed out for another day’s work.  She wondered what the day held out for her.

Stopping at her local Starbucks, she grabbed herself a Venti Caramel Macchiato to ebb her hankering for something sweet and found herself in Kensington General Hospital’s underground parking structure.

As she exited the elevator onto the main floor, she was met with the familiar hustle and bustle sounds of an unruly and chaotic emergency room.  Despite its disorderly nature, Mika thrived in this environment.  It felt like home to her.

“Good morning Dr. Stafford,” a nurse greeted her.  She nodded and proceeded for the break room seeing as she had half an hour to spare before her shift began.

She sat with her eyes shut before she internally cringed when she felt his presence.

“You know it’s not polite to sneak up on people the way that you do,” she told him.

“It amazes me that you’re so attuned with your senses.  What gave me away?”  Mark asked her.

“Your stench.  You reek of cheap cologne, day-old sex, and an ego larger than Texas,” she smirked at her remark.

Mark huffed at her insult but remained standing there, brushing off her comment.  Despite her rude, sarcastic, and sometimes stinging remarks, Mark kept coming back.  The idiot didn’t know the meaning to ceasing and desisting.  She definitely should give him props for persistence.  If he could only apply that elsewhere, like his job or towards some other woman, everything would be right as rain.

“As much as I enjoy our little chats, I’ve got a job I need to be getting to,” Mika got up, annoyed that her morning was now tarnished because of the self-assured man-whore.

           

Paging Doctor Stafford!  Doctor Stafford please report to the ER immediately, Mika heard the bored and monotonous voice of the announcer over the PA system.

She would be glad for her twelve hours of hell in the pit to be over.

Just another half an hour and you’re free, she urged herself on.

It’s not that she didn’t like her job.  Truth of the matter was that she loved it.  She was forefront in a person’s worst day of their life – a hero.  She thrived on action and the adrenaline surge that the constant buzzing about the Emergency Room offered.  There simply were times where she wanted to get away from it though.  Today had quickly become one of those days.

Rushing to the ER, a nurse directed her toward the doors she knew the ambulatory services were about to come storming through.  As expected, within the next minute, those doors came crashing open, a woman lay on a gurney, her face looking more like ground hamburger meat than that of what a normal twenty-six year old woman should resemble.

“Patient is a twenty-six year old female.  She presents with three fractured ribs, broken nose, wrist, bruises and contusions along her upper torso.  Respirations are shallow and laboured,” the medic rang out in his classic spiel.  “Classic battered case, Doc,” he threw in.